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Scholarly Critique #6

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I read the article “Can the professor come out and play? Establishing critical gaming group for faculty” by Trent Hergenrader. The article is a companion piece of sorts to one I’d read previously (they occur at the same university), and this article focuses on the author’s proposed plan to create a self-sustaining critical gaming group for faculty at the Rochester Institute of Technology. The idea of having a community within a university specifically for faculty to begin learning about games—with the idea that this would better prepare some for, and get others more interested in, using video games in higher education classrooms in a meaningful way–seems to be a new approach to the issue. The idea would appear to be that tackling general “attitudes” about video games isn’t the problem so much as simply educating people in what they are and how they work so that those who are interested in their use are much more likely to experience success (presumably contributing to a greater net positive effect and attitude of the use of video games in higher education).

The author explains his reasoning for wanting to establish a critical gaming group with a quick and pointed anecdote about one successful and one failed implementation of video games in the university classroom. In the successful approach, the author used Fallout 3 to generate meaningful discussion about larger narrative concepts with his class. After hearing about this success, another professor tried to integrate the game Dante’s Inferno with the epic poem, but their attempts resulted in failure as neither the professor nor the students reportedly understood how it connected to the poem.

The author notes that some professors didn’t know how to use games effectively as teaching tools, and that in order to integrate them into the classroom, the professor must have knowledge of games and their academic topics, rather than including games as an addition just to drive student interest in the topic. As such, the author makes an interesting comparison of the attitude of professors who are uncertain of their knowledge of video games to first-year writing students, and crafts his approach to getting professors together to learn from one another the same way he crafts writing classes to get university students to the do the same. It’s really a very clever and straightforward approach to a difficult problem. The author plans to organize a “Critical Gaming Group” to create a “physical, social and intellectual” (35) space to professors to play games and learn how they can integrate them into their courses.

The structure of the first planned iteration of the Critical Gaming Group would be to have faculty play The Walking Dead–in addition, they would have open game playing times in open classrooms while an audience watched and commented on the games, really similar in many aspects to a creative writing workshop. The author notes the purposeful choice of games created by Telltale Games, and it’s certainly a wise one. Telltale Games are designed to have very easy-to-pick and straightforward gameplay, but they include an important element of choice and strong narrative that makes them both engaging and easy-to-play for a very wide audience. At the end of the session, again, very similarly to a creative writing workshop, participants would discuss how they believe they could now use this particular game in their own courses.

The author notes that the cost for starting up the Critical Gaming Group is actually quite low, as the price for a new gaming console was approximately $400 at the time, and now often closer to $250, plus cost of games. Existing projectors and open classrooms on campus can be used as well, so costs are kept to a bare minimum. The author certainly leans on this as an example of why the reader should try to establish a Critical Gaming Group at their own university—“it is well worth” (36) trying to allocate money for such an endeavor. The author further mentions that faculty hesitant to attend the Critical Gaming Group (ostensibly because of uncertainties over the academic purpose of games) can be encouraged to attend after hearing about venues such as major media conferences like Digital Media and Learning.

As a means of selling the ideas of creating a Critical Gaming Group of campus for faculty, this article does a fantastic job. While brief, it outlines an inexpensive and achievable plan for creating one, getting initially interested faculty involved as part of a core group that can be expanded outward, and approaching games (and selecting games for the group) that have a low barrier of entry in terms of gameplay difficulty and a high degree elements faculty can use to their advantage—in this case, as demonstrated by Telltale Games games. While the author admits the idea may be too optimistic, their drive to continue forward and solid plan really makes this seem like a repeatable and worthwhile venture at other universities as well.

Trent Hergenrader, (2016) “Can the professor come out and play? Establishing critical gaming group for faculty”, On the Horizon, Vol. 24 Issue: 1, pp.34-37, doi: 10.1108/OTH-08-2015-0049

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